Church History - Part 7

You are listening to David Porson podcasts. This is a series of 11 talks covering church history. Part 7, 1800 to 1850. Great Reformers, emphasis on Bible study. I'd like to read two passages from the New Testament, and send with worship, and particularly worship in the days of the New Testament. They're in both in one Corinthians, 1st chapter 11, and then chapter 14, or at least part of both. Now, if this raises all sorts of questions in your mind, you come after us with them, and we'll see what we can do to talk them through. But this is a description of how they worshiped in those days, and the sort of questions that were raised. First, 2 of chapter 11. I commend you because you remember me and everything and maintain the traditions, even as I have delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. But any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head. It is the same as if her head were shabin. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair. But if it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn or shabin, let her wear a veil. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a woman ought to have a veil on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man or man of woman. For as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. Judge for yourselves, is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him? But if a woman has long hair, it is her pride. For her hair is given to her for a covering. If anyone is disposed to be contentious, we recognise no other practice nor to the churches of God. But in the following instructions, I do not commend you. Because when you come together, it is not for the better but for the worse. For in the first place, when you assemble as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I partly believe it. For there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognised. When you meet together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal and one is hungry and another is drunk. What do not have houses to eat and drink in, or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also the cup, after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." So we noticed that both men and women prophesied and prayed, but the women did so with their hats on and the men with their hats off. And when they came for the Lord's supper, it was a real meal, a full meal, and they ate and drank together as the last supper originally was a meal. Now turn over to chapter 14, and this fills out the picture as to how they worshipped in the early days. Verse 26 of chapter 14. What then brethren, when you come together each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation, let all things be done for edification. If any is speaking a tongue, let there be only two or at most three and each in turn and let one interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silence in church and speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak and let the others weigh what it said. If a revelation is made to another sitting by, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged, and the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for for a woman to speak in church. What did the Word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones that has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. So my brethren, earnestly desire to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things should be done decently and in order. I think that makes it very difficult indeed for any church today to claim that their worship is exactly according to the New Testament. By the year 1800, two things had begun to happen among the people of England. The first was that the great move from the country to the towns had begun. The Industrial Revolution was underway. The steam engine had been discovered. And this was going to concentrate the people of England in the towns and throw them together in living and working conditions that were utterly appalling. It was in those 50 years which we are considering tonight, 1800 to 1850, the Charles Dickens first published Pickwick Papers. And if you read that book, you'll see something of the conditions of the debtors prison and the social life of that era. Britain was beginning to build her dark, satanic mills in England's Green and Pleasant Land and that people were moving into the towns. Now the second thing that was happening to the people in this period was that they were not only moving into the towns, they were increasing very rapidly in numbers. Bear in mind that in 1800 there were 5 million people in England. 5 million, think of that, crowded out. So crowded was England at that time, with just 5 million that a clergyman called Malfress was writing an essay on the growth of population. And he was saying in 1800, Britain hasn't enough food to feed all these people. What can we do? We cannot increase the amount of food so there must be found some way of decreasing the population. He rejected contraception and said the only thing is for people to marinate and for there to be no social benefits so that large families don't get any help. And this was the kind of solution he was proposing even then. By the end of that period there were 9 million people in Britain. Nearly twice as many as they were when Malfress was busy writing and advising what should be done. When are those two physical facts that were happening in England at the beginning of our period. People moving into the towns to find work in industry and families multiplying in the population explosion such as England had never known. Mind you it seems nothing compared with today. But things were happening mentally or should I say emotionally last Sunday night I told you that the 18th century began with the movement we call rationalism which was cold it was of the mind. But the 19th century had a reaction to that and the pendulum swung to the other way and the 19th century began with a change of atmosphere which we call romanticism. The 19th century began as an affair of the heart and instead of the cold mind of the beginning of the 18th century there was now the warm heart. Now in this movement we call romanticism three things happened. The first was people began to be very interested in their feelings. No longer was the prime interest in thought now the interest was in feeling. If I mention some of the novels that were written in this 50 years you'll get the message. Jane Orston wrote pride and prejudice. Victor Hugo wrote the Notre Dame de Paris. The Brontis sisters up in the Howard in Yorkshire were writing and Charlotte was penning Jane Eyre and Emily writing that incredible story "Wuthering Heights" and these were to be followed by Trollef's barchester towers and many another novel. All these novels were going back to romance. They were going back to love. They were going back to the feelings that people have for one another. and so the romantic moment. movement had begun. But if the first thing was a return to feelings, the second thing that came out of this was a return to history. People felt that they had thrown overboard too much of the past, that all these new ideas and the French Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence and all these changes that it occurred had been too much changes of thought and the heart goes back much further. It's strange, but you can change a person's mind fairly quickly, but you can't change their heart very quickly. And a person may feel that it changes good, but their heart says, "No, I'm not going to do it. I'm too fond of the old." And because they rediscovered the heart, they rediscovered past history and they began to delve back into the past and they began to write books about the past, some of them fictional, some of them factual. For example, Sir Walter Scott was busy writing Ivan Hoel and Alexander Dumas was beginning to write three musketeers in the count of Monte Cristo and McCauley was beginning to write history of England and Blackmore was writing Lorna Dune and these were all historical books and so we had the greatest historical remences. Remence felt back into the past. We call it now their sentiment. Do you like to go back to the house in which you were born? Do you like to go and visit the places you once knew? That's heart-feeling. Thought would say there's no point in going back, but your heart says, "I love to go back and see the old places." I'm incurably sentimental like that and so is my father. We're both tired of the same rush. We just love to go back and see places that once when you all things connected with the past. You see, if you go for the heart rather than the mind, the mind will concentrate on the future, but the heart concentrates on the past. So first there was a tremendous growth in feeling. Second there was a feeling for history and third, this immeasurably brought people's minds back to religion. For religion that is purely of the mind is too cold and hard, but a religion of the heart is going to reach people. And some of the hymns that were written in this period really touched the heart. To prove that, the last hymn that we're going to sing in this service is, "A abide with me fast falls the even tide." Now if ever there was a romantic hymn, that's it. If ever hymn touched deep feelings, that's it. And still to this day, it's sung at a football match because deep down people are romantic. Deep down they are sentimental. Deep down they love feelings and deep down that kind of hymn touches those feelings and chords that were broken will vibrate once more. And all this helped religion along. And therefore you are not surprised when I tell you that in this first 50 years of last century, religion was booming. The various bodies that we've so far brought into the picture through history, the anglicans, the Methodists, the Baptists, the congregational, the friends and others, they were all growing like wildfire, particularly the non-conformist. They soon outstripped the Church of England in growth. And in 1800, 5% of the church goers were non-conformist, but in 1850, 50% were. And the 19th century was the great century of the non-conformists and the free churches, particularly the Methodists and the Baptists coming along behind. This was the great era of the free churches, the non-conformists that are centres as they were called in Scotland too. Not only were they growing, but they were dividing. I'm afraid. And yet somehow I learn this from church history. But in a period of growth and expansion, churches divide. But talk of unity comes in a period when they're declining. Now this may sound wrong. I want you to think that through. But a living organism grows by division. That's a biological lesson I learn in the laboratory. But the places in the world where the church is growing today are the places where most divisions are occurring. And the places where unity is the preoccupation are the places where the church is declining. Now I'm not going to just divide divisions on that. I just pointed out as a fact of history that division and expansion go together. And that a living church seems to go on dividing and growing that way. That when you try and put all things together, then a church stops growing. Now this may apply to local churches as well as to others. The bigger you get, the less you grow. The more you divide, the more you grow. So division is the way the churches expanded over the centuries. But in spite of the divisions that occurred, the Methodist church split into at least three major bodies during this period, the Church of Scotland split into two and many other split, there was a feeling, well, nevertheless, let's be linked to each other. It was during this 50 years that six Baptist churches got together and formed the Baptist Union. And one of those six churches was Goldhill, Charleston, Peter. Now bear in mind that this church has changed a lot since then and the Baptist Union has changed even more since then. For this church was then a strict and particular Baptist church and most of you could not have taken communion or been in membership or many of you could not have been. And bear in mind that the Baptist Union was a strict and particular Baptist Union. But that was one of the evidence as that in spite of the various divisions and growth that was going on, they wanted to be together. Another example was the various societies that came into being outside the denominations and yet cutting right across them. A draper's assistant called George Williams decided to start a new movement to win young men for Christ and he called it the Young Men's Christian Association, the YMCA. And that is spread all over the world. Mind you in his days, it was a condition before you could even join or use their facilities that you showed clear evidence of being born again of Christ. And this C in the YMCA was very much emphasized, much more so than it is today. But that was one of the movements that sprang up in this time. It was also the great era of Protestant missions. The whole 19th century was, but the difference is that in the early 50 years, the first half of the century, the missionary work was done by denominations. In the second half of the century, it was done by interdenominational missionaries societies, particularly following the founding of the China Inland mission by Hudson Taylor in 1865, which created quite a new pattern of missionaries society. But in the 50 years of which I'm thinking, it was largely denominational. And during these years, you had such great missionaries as Henry Martin, who finally decided not to marry a great young lady, a Christian young lady with whom he was deeply in love, so that he could go out as a missionary. And he knew that he would not be able to take her where he was going and where the Lord called him. And leaving her behind, he went out to India, translated the New Testament and the book of common prayer into Hindustani, went uninterpressure into the most difficult area in the world to mission and died at the age of 31. Henry Martin, a great Christian of ever the world won. This was the 50 years in which Aboe was born in Blanthire in Scotland called David Livingston. Aboe who came to know Christ and Aboe who said, "I'm going to be a missionary for Christ in China." Did you know that David Livingston was intended for China? But you know, God doesn't always let your ideas go through. And God sent David Livingston out to Robert Muffet, the great missionary in South Africa, who was translating the scriptures into tribal languages. And he went there, apart from anything else he got with wife there, because he married Muffet's daughter. And then for some 15 years, opened up the great hinterland behind the, or on the top of the plateau of Africa. And in opening it up was able to blaze a trail for missionaries to go in and take the gospel. This was the era of Alexander Duff, the great Scottish missionary who went out to India in 1829. This was the era of Samuel Marsden who went as a missionary to Australia and New Zealand. That really makes us think, doesn't it? We don't think nowadays of those places as missionary fields and yet they were. This was the day of Robert Morrison going out with the London Missionary Society to China and producing a Chinese dictionary in Bible. So it was a day not only when the church at home was growing, but when the church overseas was growing also. Now this was the great era of him writing the 18th century, Wesley Watts, and all the others we sang last Sunday evening. But in fact that wave of him writing spread over into the 19th century. If the 18th century was noted for the quality of its hymns, the 19th century was noted for the quantity of its hymns. In 20 years, 42 hymns were published and were used in every denomination by the Church of England, where it was still illegal to sing hymns. One man published a hymn book and went along to his church and had them sing it and found himself on the mat before his bishop. And the bishop said, "Now look, you shouldn't have done this. This is going to upset the boys at the top. Let me have the hymn book and I'll publish it in my name and we might get it through." And this is what he did. And the good bishop got the hymn book published in his own name and has had the credit for it ever since. It was Bishop Heber who finally got hymns on the mat for the Church of England, a bishop from Carol Ketter. An Anglican bishop, and these are some of the hymns he wrote, brightest and best of the sons of the morning, and holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty, and the son of God goes forth to war, and Bishop Heber and others brought hymns singing into the Church of England. It was during this time that we had women writing hymns for the first time. Harriet Orva was writing, "Our blessed Redeemer, air he breathes, his tender last farewell, and Charlotte Elliott was writing a hymn that has become the most famous hymn this century, I would think, just as I am without one plea." At this time, a Baptist missionary who went out with William Carey called Marshman was translating Indian hymns written by Indian Christians into English and sending them back home, and we were beginning to sing hymns from overseas. One of them was Krishna Pals hymn, "O Thou My Soul," which is number 213 in this book. There were many other hymn writers, a man called Kapral hailed the day that sees him rise. Henry Francis Light, the vicar of Brickson in Devon, was writing, "Praise my soul, the King of Heaven, as well as abide with me." John Greenleaf Wutje was writing, "Dear Lord and Father of mankind, and immortal love forever full, and dear Lord and Master of us all." He was a farm boy who heard a Scottish peddler singing songs written by Robbie Burns, and it inspired him to have a go, and he began to write hymns. He was very much connected with the Quakers, and he bewailed the fact that 200 years of silence had not the singing out of Quakers, and he wrote his hymns to try and get it back in. He didn't succeed, but nevertheless we have his hymns, and we rejoice to do so. A man called Kunda was singing, writing hymns like the Lord is King, and many another. A man who only lived 28 brief years, wrote, "O Lord, how happy should we be if we could cast our care on thee?" All these hymns, you see, help you to worship God, and they sprang out of this period of history when men were seeking after God's face. The social welfare that began in the 18th century now came to full flood, and here I want to mention some of the appalling conditions under which people were living. Take first the matter of slavery. William Wilberforce was fighting that because he was a Christian man. The book I'd love you to read by William Wilberforce is not about slavery at all, not physical slavery, it's about spiritual slavery to sin, and it's the best book I've ever read on it. And it was because he was interested in setting men soles-free that he was also concerned about their bodies. And he fought very hard and finally in 1807, he persuaded the Prime Minister William Pitt to promote a bill to abolish slavery in British territories. It took another 20 or, yes, 20 or 20 years, some 26 years before it was finally abolished altogether, but William Wilberforce lived to see it, and he said this, thank God, that I should live to see the day in which England is willing to give 20 million pounds sterling for the abolition of slavery. That's what it cost us. And if you can imagine the value of 20 million pounds sterling in those days, you will understand why the commercial mines of Britain opposed William Wilberforce. Can you see the Chancellor of the Exchequer readily agreeing to an expenditure of 20 million pounds sterling to send people free from slavery? Bear in mind the value of those days. Now the next area of social welfare in which Christians were in the Vanguard was that of reforming working conditions. I want you to listen to this carefully because I'm listening to it, my little girl's just had a birthday yesterday, she's now 10. And when I think of my little girl, I remember this. But in 1800, children of seven worked from five in the morning till eight at night with half an hour's break at noon. And I think of my child of 10. And I wouldn't like it to see her working in a factory half that time. Neither would you. You owe it to the Christian conscience that your child does not do that. Think of it that five-year-olds were down the coal mines sitting there for 12 hours opening and shutting the draft doors as the carts were pulled through with coal in. Five-year-olds. Women and children were crawling on all fours naked, chained to coal tracks, pulling them backwards and forwards in the darkness until their knees were either torn and bleeding or as hard as camel. This was happening in 1800. This is the world of England in those days. This was the world in which little boys were pushed up the chimney to sweep them from the inside. And you remember Charles King's this protest against that in Tom and the water babies. This was the world in which there were no health rules, no inspectors effectors, no more the toll limiting the hours of work for anyone. And it was left to a man called Anthony Ashley Cooper, later Lord Shafft's spray to do something about it. He was a Tory of the Tories. He was a high-born, wealthy man. And he went to school at Harrow not far from here. And one day coming down the hill, Harrow Hill from the school, he saw a porpoise funeral. And a group of drunk and men were staggering down with a coffin and they stumbled and the coffin fell and they roared with laughter as it cracked open, picked up the pieces and went on to the grave. And Anthony Ashley Cooper never forgot that. And because he was by this time a believer in the Lord Jesus, he said, "Lord, I will spend my life for the poor of this land if you will show me how." It was many years before that prayer was answered. But it was answered. And in 1842 Lord Shafft's spray saw a bill through Parliament for bidding women and girls to go down coal mines and for bidding boys under 13 to work down there. A few years later he saw the famous 10-hour bill in which factory work was limited to 10 hours in which no child under nine could be employed and in which 10 hours was the maximum work. This was Lord Shafft's spray, a Christian, but at the top of every sheet of no paper he ever wrote on were these words, even so, "Come Lord Jesus." And it was the second coming of our Lord that inspired him to do that. These were the days of the prison reform with which the names of Elizabeth Fry and John Howard will be forever associated. And these were the days of the beginning of widespread education in this land. Bear in mind that in 1800 your children and mine would hardly have stood a chance of any schooling. You would need to be very wealthy, you would need to be fairly high-born to get that education. But during this 50 years Christians marked that Christians saw that the danger of illiteracy and they fought hard in 1811 the Anglicans formed the National Society for Education. And in 1814 three years later not to be out down the non-conformists started the British and foreign school society and the schools of the land began. They believed in those days that school should not be in the hands of the state but in the hands of the church. And the schools were started that way. It was not till 1870 that the state took them over and asked the churches to give up their schools, which the free churches did entirely and the Church of England did partly and the Roman Catholic Church did not at all. But that was when the schools passed to the state. But prior to that you will find it was the Christians who brought the education to the ordinary man and woman and the ordinary boy and girl in England. Scotland of course had been way ahead as they usually have been in matters of education and John Knox had already demanded a school and a church in each parish. Christians were engaged in stopping the opium trade. Christians were engaged in stopping flogging in the forces and the Christian conscience was busy with social reforms like this. Now for the rest of this evening I want to describe for you what was happening to the Church of England during this 50 years. Staring things were happening there, things which have changed the Church of England to this very day and which are affecting discussions going on even now. Something happened in 1830 which has now raped the conversations between the Anglicans and the Methodists in this year 1967. This is the importance of the period. Now let us look at what was happening in the Church of England. We finished the story last time with the state of play like this. Within the Church of England there were three groups, low, broad and high. Or to give you their proper names, evangelical, latitude and Aryan which is quite a mouthful and Catholic. But low, broad, high, the low were evangelical and stuck to the scriptures and their 39 articles. The broad were sitting loose to all beliefs and were beginning to preach all kinds of human philosophy and opinion. The high were seeking to recover the Catholic practices which marked the Church of England before the days of the Reformation. Now on the whole at the beginning of 1800 this was the state of the the pond. The low party or the evangelical was strong in patches. It was like the cure its egg, good in parts. And one of those good parts was Cambridge, where the saintly Charles Simion was still preaching and drawing crowds and crowds to Holy Trinity Church. Incidently, St James's Church, Gerard's Cross, is a Charles Simion Trust Church and directly sprang from his work in Cambridge. Well, it was patchy, the evangelical, Anglican position. It was growing, but it was not yet the majority by any men of means and it was patchy. There were wonderful patches here and there, of which Cambridge was the outstanding example. But within that patch, or within those patches, there were two groups, one of which is now died out and one of which still meets, which were going to have a profound influence. One group was a group of laymen, and the other was a group of clergymen. The group of laymen were known as the Clapham sect, because they met in Clapham, Clapham. And to that sect belonged William Wilberfawce, and he was writing that, John Fountain, who became the first treasurer of the British and foreign Bible society, Zachary McCauley, and many another famous Englishman. They were a group who met first as a house group for prayer and Bible study. And out of that, they developed a social conscience, and the Clapham sect had a profound influence on our nation's life, because they worked through Parliament to remove the evils of our society. Now, the other group from the Church of England at the Evangelical End were called the Islington Clerical Conference. And they met this year in 1967, and they've met every year since the first half of the 19th century. And this is a group of Anglican Evangelical clergymen, who seek to get the Church of England onto evangelical lines. And they meet in conference every year. And I've no person in the Rev. Peter Johnson, who is the Vickruff, Islington Parish Church, where this meeting is held. Now we come to the broad church, and quite frankly, the broad church then, which was perhaps the majority group, was in a bad way. Religion was dead. It was lifeless. It had no going it, because there was no foundation of real belief. It was worldly, it was cold. It was religion rather than Christianity. And sooner or later, people within that get so dissatisfied with it that they do something about it. And in 1827, a group of men did something about it. Not in England, but in Dublin. Their names, Anthony Norris Groves, who was a retired missionary, John Panell, later Lord Congleton, J. G. Bellett, a lawyer, Dr. Cronin, W. F. Hutchinson, and a man who was at the beginning an Anglican curate, a man called John Nelson Darby. And from that group has come the movement which we now know as the brethren. And it's very important and interesting to note that they came out of a dead Anglican situation. For this explain both their affinities with the Church of England and their relation to it. And explains a very great deal of what has happened ever since. But they came out of that dead background of broad Anglicanism, which had nothing real to offer them by way of salvation. And they got together and they decided to seek to go right back to the New Testament and start all over again and seek to have worship according to the New Testament pattern. That's partly why I read those passages. They were seeking to get back to that. And so for this reason they abolished the ministry and simply met together and asked the Lord to minister to them through each other. They placed tremendous emphasis, and this has been their strength, on Bible knowledge. And of all the denominations, I would say, the brethren know their Bible is better than any other. Though I think to be quite fair, it's also fair to add that they know their interpretation of them better than any other as well as the scriptures themselves. And I know that the Mark will be taken in very good part. Well now they met together and with this emphasis on the Bible, they went an emphasis on the near return of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is always a healthy motive in Christian living. And with that also, they went a tremendous emphasis on the priest to devour believers. And those who joined the group who had been Anglicans, cut a drift from clericalism and church unity and became simply brethren, calling themselves by the name which Christians used in the New Testament. Now the movement spread or spontaneously spring up in many other parts. It spread from Dublin to Plymouth. And in Plymouth was the first real group of brethren in this country. And that's why many people, to their annoyance, call them the Plymouth Brethren. It's not because they found Plymouth sound as some have suggested. It's because they were the first real group in Plymouth. Now the leader there, of course, was a man called B.W. Newton. And B.W. Newton was, after some years of good ministry, accused of being a heretic, a heretic, and preaching false doctrine, and a split occurred. And some of those who had been with him in Plymouth left and went over to Bristol, where a chapel had developed a kind of worship and churchmanship very close to theirs. It was called Bethesda Chapel. The last time I was in it was for the marriage of a medical officer from Aiden who's now a doctor out in New Guinea. But in Bethesda Chapel there were two men leading a congregation on brethreny lines. One was George Muller, a man whose tremendous faith saw a million pounds flow in to support an orphanage which to this day exists in Bristol. And to this day is one of the few orphanages that never advertises its needs. And Henry Crake. And Henry Crake and George Muller gathered up some of the fragments of the split that occurred over Newton. Jay and Darby was not so happy about it. And broadly speaking, Jay and Darby became the leader of the exclusive brethren and George Muller and Henry Crake, the pioneers of the open brethren. The difference between them was fairly simple. The open brethren would have relationships with Christians outside themselves. The exclusive brethren would not. The other great difference is that the open brethren were entirely independent churches governing their own affairs. But the exclusive brethren were more centrally organized from the top, which by the way explains why if you get a good man at the top, this has a good influence all through. But if you get the wrong man at the top, it immediately influences every part of the movement. Now I would say from being a chaplain in the forces, that it always threw my heart to see somebody registered on a card as brethren. They had to register in the forces as plimuth brethren for some reason. That was the only official title the Her Majesty would recognize. But I found this that if I saw that on a card, I could be sure I was going to get a Christian into the forces. And that he would be a grand worker. But if I saw other things, I would get some good young men and some complete nominal. And I say this because it means, and I give this tribute that the brethren have exerted an influence in Christian circles out of all proportion to their quantity, but in direct proportion to their quality. Among the main lax one has noticed is a lack of social conscience and social activity. The social reform and the removal of evils in the 18th century was largely left to the evangelical church. And that clapping sector I've mentioned. Now I come to the other great thing that happened in the Church of England. And with this I move to the high church party. The low church party in the Church of England had its clapping sector for laymen and its islington clerical conference for ministers. The broad church was dead, worldly and cold. And in reaction to that, the Christian brethren arose as a separate party. But the high church in 1830 received a tremendous boost, tremendous boost. And it all started 40 miles from here in Oxford. It's called the Oxford Movement. And it happened like this. In 1828 the obnoxious test act was repealed. And the test act had forbidden Roman Catholics and nonconformists to be members of parliament. So that in 1828 a nonconformist or a Roman Catholic could become a member of parliament in England. Therein mind that the parliament of England controlled the Church of England. And suddenly Vickers woke up to the fact that nonconformists and Roman Catholics were going to control their church. And this alarmed a group of churchmen in Oxford who saw a red light in this. And these churchmen in Oxford led by these names, I'll give you the names, John Henry Newman, Richard Harrow-Fraud, Edward Pusy, John Kebel, and Faber. [BLANK_AUDIO] Incidentally, for the four hymns we've sung tonight were by Newman, Pusy, Favour and Kibble. The four hymns you've sung in this service were by these men. They got together and they said this. We must put the church right now and put it back to what it was and put it back in God's hands and out of men's hands. This was their basic aim. They said we must treat the churches a divine thing, and not a human thing, not a thing for members of Parliament to push around, but a thing for God to direct. How can we do it? And because they were right in this romantic movement, they said we'll do it by going back to what we were. Instead of going back to the New Testament as the brethren tried to do, they said we'll go back to the Middle Ages. We'll go back to the Latin and the Greek fathers, and this they began to do. And so they began to teach the most extraordinary things, and they published them in a series of little tracks, about 120 of them altogether, so that some people refer to this as the Tractarian movement. And here are some of the things they taught. They said first, the only valid ministers are those who've been ordained by bishops. Second, the only valid bishops are those who can claim a succession that goes right back 2000 years to Christ. Third, they said that when a baby is baptized, it is born again of the Spirit and becomes a Christian. Fourth, they said that a priest actually makes the bread and wine into Christ's body and blood. Fifth, and this is where they really came unstack. Fifth, they said this, John Henry Newman wrote this in one of his tracks, that it's perfectly all right for a clergyman of the Church of England to say that he believes the 39 articles, and to reserve the right to give them his own meaning. Now this was a blow at the heart of the Church of England, and such an uproar was raised over this, that John Henry Newman went off and joined the Roman Catholic Church, and became a cardinal in it, and many of the other Tractarians from Oxford did the same. The tragedy is that they didn't do this in the first place, because the effect of their work, instead of collapsing when they went and joined Rome, and John the Church that says we've got bishops that go all the way back, the effect of their work radically changed the Church of England. Let me read a paragraph from a bishop, Knox, writing in 1933. He said probably even Newman or Pusy would be astounded, if they could visit the scenes of their old labors, and could see bishops mighted, invested in copes and chasables. Clergy and Church is so ornamented as to be indistinguishable from those of Rome, images of the Virgin Mary with lights burning before them, pixels, monstances, and like evidences of worship of the host, and could hear the mass offered in Anglican churches for the living and the dead. Now that was a bishop writing in 1933. This movement which sought to do good, brought Roman practice back into the Church of England, and you can see the effect of this movement in most parish churches in this land. Now having said all that, which is critical, and I think the most tragic thing that happened to the Church of England since the Reformation, and the thing which has wrecked the conversations with Methodism at the moment, because the thing that has brought those conversations to a grinding halt for the time being, are the Anglo-Catholics who are insisting with the Oxford movement that any United Church must have a succession of bishops that goes back to the Middle Ages, and through the Middle Ages. But having said that, may I say now, that they did a lot of good too, and are deliberately chose for Anglo-Catholic hymns, and the fifth that we're going to sing in a moment, the five hymns of this service are all Anglo-Catholic. And they are hymns that show a deep piety. Can I say that because of their seriousness over religion, because of their desire that the Church should be their vine thing, and because of their putting Christ in the center of their thinking, that I find myself with far more in common with the high-englican than I do with the broad. And I think evangelical anglicans would tell you the same thing. If only we could drop the Roman side of it, the bishops side of it, and all the vestments and all the ritual and litigious side of it, I don't think that is needed to make the Church what it ought to be. But the centrality of Christ is needed. Listen to some of the hymns these men wrote, if I can find my notes that go on. Here we are. John Kebel wrote, "Blessed are the pure in heart which we sing, and new every morning is the love." John Henry Newman wrote, "Praise to the holiest in the height, and lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom." I remember a couple asking me if they could have that at their wedding. I thought, "What a him to chew." And then favor wrote, "My God, how wonderful they are, and there's a wideness in God's mercy." And Pewdie wrote, "Lord of our life and God of salvation, God of our salvation." And others wrote, "Good Christian men rejoice, Jerusalem, the golden, or happy band of pilgrims, see amid the winter snow, most appropriate for tonight, we should have had that." Jesus, the very thought of thee when morning gills the skies, they gave us some of our very best hymns. And I will tell you this, in an Anglo-Catholic hymn, you will always find the word "holinance." Did you notice that in the hymns we've sung tonight? You'll always have this sense that God is holy, that the church is to be holy. The tragedy is that this was mixed up with so much return, romantic return to the Middle Ages, ritual and liturgy, and has disguised this deep piety that was at the heart of it. So I must finish. We finish at the end of 1850, and we've learned enough there to, I hope, look forward to next Sunday night when I want to look at the greatest 50 years from an evangelical point of view. It began with the greatest revival that had been in England, the 1859 revival, out of which came people like Dr. Bernardo. It moved on and had an effect on people like Hudson Taylor, C.T. Stud, D.L. Moody, the great names that mean so much to us spring in the second half of the 19th century, but that's another story. May I finish like this. Two men were busy writing in 1850. Two men, and they were going to be the greatest hindering factor to the Christian faith, though neither of them knew it. In the next 100 years, one of them was going to sweet Christianity almost off the face of the third of the world. He was a German Jew writing in the British Museum, his name Karl Marx, and in 1850 Karl Marx was writing, and he was writing his book, Das Kapital. He had already published the Communist manifesto some years earlier, but now he's sat writing a book that was to change the course of history. And the other man was not studying history or society as Karl Marx did. The other man, after a voyage on the good ship, the Beagle, round the South Sea Islands, was writing a book of nature. And his name, destined to be a clergyman, he gave himself to the study of biology, his name Charles Darwin, and he was writing a book called The Origin of Spices. And these two books, Karl Marx and Das Kapital, Charles Darwin, and The Origin of Spices were going to be used almost against their knowledge, and certainly against Darwin's will, and desire to attack the Christian faith as it has never been attacked before in history. And it's as if heaven was getting ready for that attack, as if God the Holy Spirit knew it was coming and decided in 1859 to pour out on England such a revival, such a Holy Spirit movement, such a changing of society in a men and women, such a sweeping of thousands into the Kingdom of God, as we'll be able to bring the church through that next 50 years. Christ was going to keep his church. Christ was going to build his church. He didn't tell us to, he said, I will build my church. And as I studied the history of the church, I can see Christ standing in the shadows, sending his Holy Spirit when it's needed to strengthen his people, to bring them through, and the one society that will never disappear from this world of ours is the church of Jesus Christ. It won't disappear until he comes again. And then the complete church will go to be with him in glory. Praise his name. Let us pray. Oh God, I have no father. We thank you for all your people through the ages. And we thank you that they are not dead, but living. You are not the God of the dead, but of the living. The God of Abraham and Isaac can Jacob, the God of Augustine, the God of Martin Luther, the God of John Wesley, the God of these people of whom we've been speaking tonight. We thank you that Jesus Christ is building his church and that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. We thank you that you do not look at labels, that though we have been considering many different groups with men made labels on them, yet you know those who are yours, and you You will gather them everyone, you whose eyes on the sparrow. You will not forget one of your children. So Lord, we look forward with hope into the future and believe that those empires rise and fall, and those Christians are attacked physically, mentally and spiritually, but those whom you have called and chosen, you will keep against that day, and we rejoice in this security and pray that you will make us worthy of it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.